Kenenisa Bekele to Run January's Dubai Marathon

World 5000- and 10,000-meter record holder Kenenisa Bekele[4] will run his third marathon in Dubai on January 23, and has enlisted Italian coach Renato Canova to prepare him for the effort.

Three-time Olympic[5] track champion Bekele won his marathon debut in Paris in April in a course record 2:05:04 but then, at Chicago[6] in October, placed a disappointing fourth. The Dubai Marathon is popular with elite Ethiopian runners and “has a very flat course that produces fast times,” Bekele said in a press release[7].

Bekele’s agent, Jos Hermens, confirmed to Runner’s World Newswire that Bekele will work with Canova, who has also coached Hermens’ clients Florence Kiplagat, a 2:19:44 marathoner, and Moses Mosop[8], who ran 2:03:06 for second in Boston[9] in 2011. Canova also mentored American Ryan Hall [10]for about a half-year in 2012 and 2013, but Hall was injured for much of that alliance.

Hermens told Newswire that Bekele “knows what to do on the track,” where he was largely self-coached “but he was not prepared well enough, certainly, for Chicago.” The decision to work with Canova was made by Hermens soon after the Chicago Marathon.

In Dubai, noted Hermens, the “goal is to break the [course] record there, 2:04:23, and in the back of his [Bekele's] mind is the Ethiopian record by Haile [Gebrselassie],[11] 2:03:59.”